Ron Martinsen's Photography Blog: REVIEW: ColorByte ImagePrint 10

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

REVIEW: ColorByte ImagePrint 10 - Discount Offer & Tutorial

Print on Epson paper on a Canon PRO-1000 with ColorByte ImagePrint 10.0.16 & up

Back when I reviewed ColorByte ImagePrint 8 it made great prints, but the user interface - especially the mechanism for getting ICC profiles - was cumbersome. While this new user interface won't win any design awards, it's fairly straight forward to use. What's more, it requires a lot less clicking than printing directly from Photoshop using a operating system driver.

A word about sharpening

It should be noted that by default ImagePrint assumes you've sharpened your image and it won't apply any additional sharpening.

It has been my experience that Photoshop and especially Perfect Resize are much better at resizing images than letting ImagePrint do it, so if you let ImagePrint resize your images then they will be a little softer than what you'd get from the driver and Photoshop as you'll see below.

Corrections Window

To compensate for this you can use the Corrections feature (shown above) in ImagePrint to add sharpening, but my preference is to use Perfect Resize to the exact output size, and then sharpen in Photoshop before bringing the image into ImagePrint. This will give you the best resize and sharpness.

Color Prints Compared

The image in this section were printed on the same paper using profiles provided by Red River when printed from Photoshop and ColorByte when printed from ImagePrint. The original was a 3456 x 5184 pixels PSD using ProPhoto RGB 16-bit, and the same file was used in both Photoshop and ImagePrint.

All of the prints featured in this article were scanned with a Epson Perfection V850 Pro Scanner using Epson Scan software. Dust and lint was intentionally left on the bed to prove that it was in fact a scan of print. All prints look more vibrant in real life.

Click the images to see the full size original scans for more detail. For best results, open the originals in Lightroom or Photoshop and compare them side by side. Please leave your browser open on this article while you are doing the comparison and delete the images after you are done comparing.

Please note that it is near impossible to see any differences unless you are viewing at 100% or more, so do not use the thumbnails featured here to draw any conclusions.

Canon PRO-1000

The following print was done on the same paper, Red River Paper Palo Duro SoftGloss Rag with one printed using the best printer driver settings in Photoshop using the OS driver:

Canon PRO-1000 from Photoshop 2017.0.1

and another done using the Mixed Warm display lighting setting from the ImagePrint profile in ImagePrint 10.0.18:

Canon PRO-1000 from ImagePrint 10.0.18

The net result is that the image in ImagePrint has a much more accurate sky color (better blues) and the tonal range in the reds is slightly better. Unlike the Epson, I didn't measure any improvements in shadow details which could be due to the experience ImagePrint has had building Epson drivers over the years.

Epson SureColor P800

The following print was done on the same paper, Red River Paper Palo Duro SoftGloss Rag with one printed using the best printer driver settings in Photoshop using the OS driver:

Epson P-800 from Photoshop 2017.0.1

and another done using the Mixed Warm display lighting setting from the ImagePrint profile in ImagePrint 10.0.18:

Epson P-800 from ImagePrint 10.0.18

Like the Canon, the sky color was much more accurate (better blues) but in this case I felt the tonal range in the reds were much better. I also saw a slight improvement in the detail in the shadows:

Black & White Images Compared

NOTE: I'll do B&W image comparisons in the near future.

Video Review & Tutorial

I've created a simple 10 minute demo of how I like to use this product and what I like about it. I've avoided getting into too much detail as this is meant to be a basic overview along with my opinion instead of a fully featured tutorial.

NOTE: While I demo this product using Windows, there is a Mac version as well.

Want more videos?

The ColorByte home page features a list of videos that discusses what's new if you are upgrading, and it is helpful to go to the Exclusive Features and Tutorials pages to quickly learn about all this product has to offer.

Conclusion

At the end of the day this product isn't just using your printer driver - it is using its own version of a more advanced version of your printer driver to give you the best results possible. This low level control of your printer coupled with excellent ICC profiles really does result in the best print quality I've seen both in color as well as black and white prints. Of course if you are handy at creating very high quality ICC profiles and are happy with the results you are getting it might not be right for you, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

The utilitarian user-interface is painfully out of date and quirky, but it's functional and does its job well. The resizing is poor compared to what you get from Photoshop or Perfect Resize so external resize and sharpening in advance is his highly recommended.

Despite it's steep price, I highly recommend it for those who earn income off of their prints and wish to give their clients the best print quality possible. I don't recommend it for hobbyists unless you are very unsatisfied with the quality of the profiles you have now for your favorite papers, and you are willing to absorb the price for better results.

If price is the only thing holding you back, then see my discount below.

Where to Buy?

Purchasing this product is a little unconventional because it requires a USB dongle to be plugged into your computer when you use this software. While you can purchase direct (please tell them you came from ronmartblog.com), I've arranged a special discount that I'd recommend you take advantage of instead. Here's details:

Get 10% OFF ImagePrint

I have worked a special arrangement with ColorByte to offer you the first ever discount that was made available for a blog several years back. ColorByte is offering a 10% off discount to readers of this article when you contact JVH Technical, LLC by phone or email. You can not get this discount through the web or ColorByte directly, so you must contact JVH and you MUST mention this blog in order to get the discount.

If you have any questions or concerns about this discount program, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

NOTE: This product does offer a 30 day money back guarantee as well as a free demo that will watermark your prints.

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

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If you enjoyed this article, please support future articles like this by making a donation or saving money by using my discount coupon codes. Either way, your support is greatly appreciated!

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The opinions provided are of Ron Martinsen alone and do not reflect the view of any other entity